Skepchick Quickies 10.21

On October 21, 1921, George Melford’s film The Sheik premiered. This film is notable because it made a star out of Rudolph Valentino. (He is my second favorite sheik, though–the top spot goes to Frank Zappa as Sheik Yerbouti.)

A modest proposal to neutralize gerrymandering – If you’ve ever wondered why seemingly-crazy people get re-elected to office (I’m looking at you, Michelle Bachman), you may not be familiar with the concept of gerrymandering. (It’s a fun word to say, at least.)

15 Comments

I think “The Man Who Forgot Everything” is a review of “Permanent Present Tense,” which is by Suzanne Corkin, the neuroscientist who was the primary investigator of the case of H.M., not by Oliver Sacks.

Understandable! When I think “compellingly written neurological case study,” I think Oliver Sacks too. But I’m looking forward to reading Corkin’s book, it should be fascinating. H.M.’s case is so important and unique, her book could easily join Sacks’s in the canon of neurology must-reads.

Pfft… I could have told you that it was really a warrior princess. If Warcraft has taught me anything, it’s that a warrior prince would have left behind a hefty set of fully-covering armor. You probably just can’t see the chainmail bikini amongst the rest of the remains.

Off course the overwhelming majority of MMO include things like monsters, supernatural, witch craft, and take place in place that don’t exist in the real world, so I doubt they’re striving for historical accuracy. Still it is pretty stupid how they tend to make the female warriors, knights, sorceress ect.. dress.

One of the nice things about being Canadian is the CRTC (our broadcast/cable/telecommunications regulator). While, like all beaurocracies, they have their flaws, they have their good points too. Fox News has (at least twice that I am aware of) applied for a broadcast licence as a news broadcaster, but have been denied because they do not meet the accuracy standards set by the CRTC. They could qualify as a comedy channel, if they so chose.

I wonder if any country has considered representation by random selection. As long as your random number generator is normalized every representative represents a cross-section of the population rather than any one area.